Whew, alright.... Let's do this in order:
DMD2006 - your question is a new one.
No one has asked me that yet. I guess, technically we do our wax-ups using the "addition" technique... though, it's kind of silly to categorize it because in either way you end up either adding or cutting wax out to make your finished product. Indeed they are a pain, but the nice thing about Tufts is that the upper years (for you guys, namely US!) are there to help you out and in fact love helping out. A couple of second years and third years (D'04s and '03s) taught me some really good methods of performing wax ups. So don't worry about it too much. About 95% of the class goes in with no clue as to what a wax up is. hehe. Oh and word to the wise... don't listen to the professors who teach the wax-ups here... ask the upper years for help. The professors are cool and all, but they really don't teach a formal method, they encourage you to mess around with it a little. Oh and incidentally, the waxing instruments are provided to us by the school (we pay for them in our tuition/fees).
Baracuda: 1) The law did pass (as far as I know) and we did go to the state house to protest it (to no avail). It hasn't translated into anything for us yet and we don't know what will happen. To be perfectly honest, I am worried about it to as it could very well affect my ability to get patients in third year. For all who don't know what happened, Mass. passed an amendment that pretty much limits further what Masshealth (the state health insurance) covers, and that it doesn't really cover dental any more. Tufts, BU, and Harvard get the majority of their patients from Masshealth. I guess we'll see what happens.
2) This is a great question. Now I'm gonna be perfectly honest. We have a bunch of people in our class that are proof that admissions isn 100% flawless. But we also have some really cool people. But this semester, it really came up how competitive the d'05s really are. First off, we had the highest entrance GPA of any tufts dental class, and it reflects in our marks. This translates as some hard-core cutthroats, but they don't associate with the rest of the class (more or less ostracized). There are some people who are a little uptight as far as marks are concerned, but it's not as bad as undergrad (at least my undergrad, anyways). *laughs* Hot ladies?? Actually, we definitely have some attractive women in our class (the D'04s have more), but it's like any other situation... you spend 8 hours a day with these people EVERY day... you get really sick of them. Heheh. In my class, there is only 2 formal couples, and it's pretty much stayed that way all year. Everyone is looking outside the class.
DDS2006 - I pay 50/mnth to park my car, but I take the T in. There's *no* way I'm driving to school. Once you get here you'll see what I mean. Boston driving is horrible. Nevermind that, the traffic sucks (especially the since I have to drive through the big dig). Now I *DIDN'T* say the workload was light. That's the toughest part of dental school. The material is actually easy, but there's SOOOOOOOO MUCH TO KNOW!!!! They don't need to make the material conceptually difficult because there's enough of it to drown the unsuspecting. As of right now, I feel very confident in my abilities (given what I've learned to date) and I suspect that I'll know my stuff when I graduate. Tufts typically has a good representation of dentists.
Well, let's be honest about the price. You and I are both used to paying 4k/yr CDN for tuition. So of course I feel like I'm getting chapped. All things considered, however, I'd rather be here than BU, USC, Nova, etc. etc. The professors have been pretty good, I *do* feel like I'm in dental school, I'm learning more about enamel than I ever thought I'd know, and I'm happy with the way things are going. So if I had to pick a private college, I'd stay with Tufts.
I hope that answers everyone's questions! For the next couple of weeks, I may not check in here as often because I've got exams coming up. But I'll do my best!
Regards,
Mo.
